DIRECT MERGING OF TRIANGLE MESHES PRESERVING SIMULATION SEMANTICS FOR FAST MODIFICATION OF NUMERICAL MODELS

Nowadays, most of the numerical product behavior analyses are carried out following four steps: Computer Aided Design (CAD) modeling, mesh definition, Finite Element (FE) simulation and results analysis. This process can be completed by optimization loops. In the context of current maintenance and lifecycle problems, the product is already designed, and its behavior has to be studied and improved during its exploitation. For the maintenance of the EDF power plants, it is critical to identify the problem source and to provide the adopted solution in a short time. In this paper, we propose a method to enable the direct modification of 2D FE models for fast and accurate FE simulation. This approach enables to avoid both multiple iterative updatings of the CAD model and the remeshing problems of complex shapes while reusing the exiting meshes together with the semantic data useful for FE simulation. Starting from existing triangle meshes to be merged, the algorithm removes the intersected faces and fills in the created holes while ensuring that the semantics initially associated to the meshes is preserved. The holes filling algorithm is driven by an aspect ratio factor which ensures that the produced triangulation fits well the FE requirements